


proximity

by darling



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Beginnings, Canon, Friendship, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 13:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darling/pseuds/darling
Summary: everyone has a story and no one's whole story gets told, but these are some parts of theirs.





	proximity

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i love the mad burnish trio /makes a heart-sized fist!/ T_T i mean i love everyone in promare except everyone on kray's side 8D;;; but yeah! anyway!  
2\. extrapolative liberties taken, spoilers for movie ... but i imagine you wouldn't be reading it if you hadn't seen it...  
3\. thank you for reading <3

_ - _

  
  
  
  


_ between here and there we have been  _

_ everywhere; _

_ and so we are nowhere, nowhere… _

_ nowhere at all -- _

  
  
  
  


_ - _

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


they don't ask him how he found out about them. the news is good for the same things it's always been good for: selective storytelling, gracious propaganda, and all in all a bad reputation. it's not something meis or gueira have ever second-guessed, even going so far as to revel in the prolific nature of their wanted images on the morning, afternoon, and evening bulletins. even when lio shows up, dropped back against a cold sun, there's no guilt so much as reconsideration. much like their leader, meis and gueira have not often made any life choices for the fun of it. recklessness isn't the same as frivolity; a desperation to burn is not the same as lack of self-preservation. 

"it seemed right at the time," meis says around his cigarette. gueira watches the wind tread through that long dark hair and, knowing exactly how that feels, smiles his uneven smile. says,

"yeah." 

it's dark out as gueira parts meis' hair into three sections with the blind ease of years.

  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  


beginnings are beginnings: not easy and not fun. 

"i get not killing civilians. but freeze force?"

"even freeze force. the no-killing rule stands."

"but…"

gueira thinks of shattered bodies that melted away to nothing in the unasked for desert of how things are these days. he thinks of hiding and holding his breath until he only knew he was alive because he could feel meis alive and hiding too right next to him. he thinks and then he tries not think because he and meis have already made their decision.

"just say what you're thinking."

it's not that easy, is what gueira is thinking. but what he says is, "forget it, boss."

he doesn't miss the way lio's shoulders rise a little, the tension of a tide held back in kind. but it's not worth commenting on. he leaves and kicks his way through the shadows of promeopolis the way surviving burnish have taught themselves to over the years: fires in containment.

  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


where thunder gives warning for lightning at a distance, a storming wind just happens. meis doesn't challenge lio but he does ask him what all the inherited burnish have been wondering. he asks him over colored smoke and lemon-lime soda, says low and milder than he feels,

"how much stronger are you?"

he's seen it; most of them have. but seeing isn't understanding. with so much left to the sacrifice of not knowing, everything meis can know, he will. he watches the ash tap off his cigarette and doesn't imagine it's himself but knows one day it probably will be. then he looks at lio and thinks: or not. 

he repeats it in his head: how much stronger?

it's the self-awareness of the question that leaves lio no reason to lie -- though lio doesn't lie very often regardless, not having the time.

says, "probably a lot. but there's only one way to really find out."

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


in his time running, lio has never met one burnish much less two with the flares with colors like meis and gueira possess. he shares his guess with them: that that means something about their strength. meis counters that that would mean lio's strength is twice that, given his flames carry two colors, sometimes perceivably three. 

they travel out to where the heat signals go blind.

it's been less than a month since lio took the throne of the mad burnish.

the smile he sends them over his shoulder is what catches them off-guard most (more than his fire, more than his full mad burnish form, more than the almost kind press of an arrow-tip to the throat), because lio smiles the way he cries: open, alarmingly honest, and tenaciously hopeful. it reminds gueira of once when meis smiled at him at sunrise and told him not to run too far. it reminds meis of once when gueira returned his smile but it was sunset and gueira was telling him how he'd like to really live one day, if they could. 

they aren't surprised when lio beats them both though it smarts in all the ways losing a good fight usually does. 

there's no need to patch-up; they pay no attention to their ever healing bodies as they walk back to avoid drawing attention. 

  
  
  
  


*

  
  


the regenerative effect keeps them in a kind of stasis. 

lio wants to know things he doesn't dare ask: what their life was like before, when they got their tattoos, if they're scared. but lio is the leader and some things aren't his territory to inquire; he keeps his mouth shut when he needs to. 

but maybe he underestimates them. 

one day after a raid, meis catches him staring and arches a brow. lio, obscured by his hair, hides his expression but it's too late. 

"have you seen gueira's?" 

lio blinks. nods. looks away again.

"we were kids."

lio thinks: you still are. and he knows that's rich coming from him but maybe it applies all-around.

"oh." in his role as rebel leader, lio knows how to present and how to posture and how to pronounce. but as lio it's hard to remember. because even before he burst into the lives of the mad burnish to reroute their self-destruct, lio hadn't been lio for some time. not really. or he's been so focused on the fight that he hasn't let himself be. asking questions -- what were you like, what was it like, what do you miss -- is hard. impossible. he just can't. he can't--

meis' hand in his hair is a cooler flame, rubbing against his scalp until it's so messy that lio has the look of a ruffled cat. 

for some reason, he doesn't mind, and days later, when gueira does the same, he realizes it's not just that he doesn't mind; rather, he likes it.

they're not stupid. they never do it in front of anyone else. lio is leader. lio is boss. lio is more than the name. 

  
  


*

  
  
  
  


but away from news bulletins and public raids and ragtag gatherings held together with his voice promising a safety that's not just a dream, sometimes lio is just lio.

  
  
  


*

  
  


this is what meis and gueira give to him: the hours of re-remembering himself.

this lio is allowed, for example, to throw his arms out and hook them close and grin as he says,

"we did well today."

this lio is allowed to take drags off of one of them and smile like the small dragon he is as he stares in half-lidded contentment for just being warm without quite so much fire.

"lucky us," gueira hums and it's also warm, that tone that has the uplift of some kind of youth they all still look but don't really feel. 

"lucky us," meis echoes.

this lio is allowed to reach out his hands and mess up their hair: good job.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


they were very young once. meis drew all the life up inside of him and breathed it back into gueira. and meis who doesn't pray and never would, made up his own incantation of words already known, well, one word:

"please." _breathe_. "please." _burn_. "please." _be_ with me.

it was probably shock, or probably fear, or probably both that kept meis from understanding it had worked until he felt gueira's mouth reply:

okay, okay, okay.

  
  


*

  
  
  


( _ stay _ .)

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


where all burnish before that they had lost, started to go from their fingertips or the ends of their hair, gueira had started to fall apart at the ink on his chest. and meis knows it's his imagination, how he felt like his own had started to do the same; it hadn't; he'd been using it to support him over a too-fleeting body while asking for just one thing. 

but even the phantom of disappearance is a feeling, and it stays with him for a long long time.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


longer windows of time between raids mean less food, and lio always gives up his share, so meis and gueira do the reasonable thing: wait until it's just them present and combine theirs together, then divide it into three.

the first time they try this, lio outright refuses. the second time they try, he takes one bite. 

the third time, gueira says simple, kind, and with a sigh, "boss."

lio accepts the full portion and when he commits another rarity by falling into an exhausted sleep, it's meis and gueira who throw their jackets over him. 

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


where lio brings a smell like incense, smoke, and roses, gueira is the seaside before a thunderstorm. meis is the wind and the impression of motion the way the wind is the verb of Carry and changes depending on the direction it comes from. what this makes for is a disorienting kind of triumvirate and when they get in close proximity -- alone alone alone but not lonely --

\-- they twine: flames that never make smoke.

  
  
  


*

  
  


gueira notices lio is gone and doesn't overthink it until he does. lio did say he'd be gone for a day or two but it's going on three and it's only a gut feeling but his gut feeling is part of why he's still alive himself, so gueira grabs meis and they scour the hot spots within reach: hidden in the city, hidden outside of the city, so on and so forth.

"he's fine," meis assures him.

"i know that!"

he doesn't.

when they find lio seated cross-legged and disturbingly calm with a freeze-ring around his wrists, gueira decides he wouldn't call that 'fine' but it's also not a pile of ash so he'll take it. still, they don't get within a few meters of lio before he says through gritted teeth,

"stop."

lio's whole body freezes several times. each time, gueira stops breathing. each time, meis jerks forward and stops himself in the same stilted motion. 

"boss???"

it's not like they don't know how to pick various kinds of locks, but freeze-rings are a technology a little above their level. they don't know where to start. 

"almost…" lio seems to be talking to himself more than them, which is also alarming. 

they only understand when the flare of his fire pulses and they know it's two or three colors but somehow it gives the impression of a prism, shot through with sun.

the freeze-ring falls to the ground and they're so impressed they almost don't catch lio who follows suit.

  
  
  


*

  
  


gueira carries him on his back and meis offers to switch off with him part of the way and when they're close enough to the chosen hideout of the night that someone might see them, they wake him and let him walk on his own.

  
  
  


*

  
  


over the months, they acquire another freeze-ring here and there. lio whittles down his breakout time from days to hours to finally minutes. 

and it would be embarrassing for someone else maybe, but the admiration meis feels is so replete there's no room for self-consciousness. it reminds him a little of how he feels about gueira.

gueira gushes over lio because he can't help himself, and meis suppresses his laughter when he spies how the tips of lio's ears go so pink they're almost red. but then it looks too fun so he joins in the gushing.

lio shoves them both away and tells them he's going to go find them food, which as far as lio is concerned is the same thing as saying: i like you too.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


the thing about saving lio in return for sacrificing themselves is this: it's not a gamble. not to the two of them who know lio better than anyone -- better, maybe, than lio lets him know himself. they send him like a low-flying shooting star into the heart of forced rebirth knowing lio will lament and blame and ignite; knowing he will not fail. 

because to meis and gueira, lio can't fail.

it's not what he does; it's not who he is --

\-- to them.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


the burnish pods are as inhumane as expected. meis isn't even surprised. gueira is underwhelmed. but none of their met expectations can lessen how much it hurts. and it's strange, after so many years of burning, for it to hurt. 

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


when kray puts lio into the core, it hurts worse, worst, most terrible of all. 

kray taunts lio with the screams and pain of his family and completely fails to acknowledge the way the burnish go devastatingly silent in their hearts is the first time lio's voice tears jagged. desperate. pieces that refuse to be fragments. a mosaic of intent that would make the right shape if it could just think feel be enough to do so. but kray is one of those people: people who spend their whole lives creating a light that's never good enough for them only to hunger after someone else's -- smart enough to know they'll never have it, starving enough to want to try anyway. because when kray tells lio he'll fly them through the stars it's _there_; it is.

that sense of what could have been if kray were a different person.

a different burnish.

_ we _ will fly through the stars.

but it isn't 'we'. and it never can be. and these are just the graveyard wishes of a man outstripped by his fear and his passion all at once. and that's the difference isn't it -- well, one; where kray would run, lio has been running but only so that he one day might claim the four letter word he and his people dream of most of all.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


_stay_.

*

the core activates. lio screams. 

but to meis and gueira, to the children they've saved, to the elders they protected, to their peers they taught, it sounds different; it sounds like crying -- the singularity of burning from the inside out for all the 'i couldn'ts' and every single 'i should have' and any given 'i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm so sorry.'

because lio is not just lio. meis knows. gueira knows. the world knows.

yet knowing isn't the same as understanding, isn't feeling it in the burn of your blood or the stark cold of your bones made bare with fear and longing.

for meis and gueira, it's both; it's all three; it's how they are.

they feel the weight of things because that's how it is when you follow someone long enough to know their favorite food, music, time of day, and star in the sky; they feel the loss. and they feel the tenacity; the audacity; the nature of lio who is not just lio but also never stops being only lio that says even unsaveable things have a prayer.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


_ we burnish do not kill. _

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


not others.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


not ourselves.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


maybe they scream more in answer than pain this time. but lio's voice is loudest; sharpest of all.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


to kray, it sounds like victory at the edge of a cliff whose edge you cannot see.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


"swords. bows and arrows. motorcycles." gueira laughs. meis thinks it's a gentle sound. "our boss is the coolest."

"hottest," meis deadpans his correction, but he's smiling.

lio, not hearing any of this, a good distance away and carrying a toddler on his shoulders, points up at the sky. they're far enough from the city that some stars are visible. and they can't hear lio either but the sentiment is there anyway.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


_ make a wish. _

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


there hasn't been any time for meis and gueira to make much of a call on galo thymos except that he's as strong as he is stupid. but when he shows up protected by lio's flame, they make a wish irregardless of that because lio is dying.

because lio is dying and if anyone can save him they would like it to be them but it could be anyone if it works; if they don't have to bend their beaten frames over a ghost made of ash on an earth that doesn't deserve him anyway as far as they're concerned; if they don't have to wake up at night looking for someone who isn't there anymore. 

*

if.

if.

if.

*

  
  
  


"if you could have anything, what would you wish for?" someone asked this. no one recalls who. though they do remember that meis shrugged. gueira did the same. and it wasn't that they didn't have answers so much as they weren't sure they wanted to share at the time. but lio leaned his cheek on his palm, his face almost serene with certainty as he said,

"freedom."

  
  
  


*

  
  


it's the kind of answer that makes a person feel self-conscious or foolish usually. but gueira remembers neither of those descriptors for lio; remembers rather how young he felt when he said it; how young it made gueira himself feel just hearing it -- that thing inside that word that wasn't that word but really really was: hope.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


meis remembers how things went on after that -- business as usual. because that was also very lio: the truth to a fault.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


_ we burnish are free. _

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


galo thymos promises to save everyone. it's the foolhardy vow of a hero. and meis and gueira never entertained the tiniest notion he would be theirs, but they find themselves wanting to let it become true. 

  
  


*

  
  
  


when lio's heart beats his flame surges. the burnish sigh in a relief that aches in decibels of years. 

  
  
  


*

  
  


he doesn't call on them alone but meis and gueira wouldn't want him to; that's not how the burnish have gotten by this long. he calls on all of them and when they reply with 'boss' even in the hectic rush of finally knowing what to do, lio can feel it: that human warmth that has nothing to do with stars or flash fires. 

it feels like gratitude.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


the jacket gueira wears is a little worse at its stress points these days, but he refuses to change it out for a replacement. meis doesn't bother pretending to not notice, instead helps reinforce the stitching and adds a few studs to places where scratches have made irreparable marks on the leather. he doesn't remember where he got it but he does remember the night he held it out to a surprised gueira; does remember the smile that remains somehow more visceral in his memory than their first kiss. he mentions this once to gueira who snorts and calls him mushy and isn't fooling anyone with a blush deeper than the red of his hair.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


they're more than halfway through a city running from a freeze force unit when lio tells them to keep running and disappears. if it was just them, they might disobey; but it's not. they have a few other burnish with them -- promises of safety on the tips of their tongues. so they do as they're told. 

a day later, lio reconvenes with them at the safepost and throws something at meis who catches it before really looking at what it is. then he stares. 

it's his jacket. well. gueira's. well. he blinks. 

when he looks back up he notes a few things: the circles under lio's bright eyes, the tears in his clothing where surely his body suffered though the evidence is healed up in flames by now, the angle of his face that means he's focused on something. meis follows his stare to a couple children playing tag. ah. 

"that was stupid," meis says and it's quiet. no one else could possibly hear them. lio hums.

"yeah."

the children's laughter feels like a fist around a good emotion afraid to he named.

"hey boss."

"yeah?"

meis folds the jacket over his arm, knowing what lio knows -- how gueira would have noticed the second they scrambled out of the flat they were biding time in until their refugees healed a little, how he did not say anything because he wouldn't dare jeopardize them, how much this will mean to him, how yeah he'll probably cry, so on; so forth -- and walks until his arm barely brushes lio's.

"thanks."

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


"thanks." lio says and gueira will not admit to crying but it does feel good: the three of them crashing into each other awkward limbs and awed hearts no longer inflamed yet so warm. in days to come there will be adjustments of temperature across the world both in body and mind. it will not be fast. but they have been living fast all this time and maybe, maybe for once it might be a kindness: to live slow. even with the hardship. even if it's just one battle ended to enter another. maybe it's human: the dawn gold carding across them in a way they haven't felt so well in years, the promare burning too bright too loud too much. lio says thanks and god it's unreal -- standing on the threshold of day with a little less fear, a little more joy.

a little.

thanks.

in the midst of their tangle of an embrace, lio has the thought that they should all go to the sea.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


gueira doesn't ask what lio says to kray foresight as the ex governor is taken away. it's not any of his business. but he gets the gist. the promare are gone but lio is a fire himself maybe; gueira can see him burning, a certain strike of the flint that one galo thymos doesn't seem to possess; too forgiving perhaps. gueira watches lio watch them take kray until the girded door of the security convoy slams shut; then he watches him watch it take off, the gust of its lift wreaking havoc with lio's hair. 

he still looks furious. 

so gueira walks over, noting galo somewhere in the distance, already helping with rubble excavation with approximately 1000% input. incredible. he shakes his head. he could ask a lot of other things but he decides one makes more sense than the rest, leans his arm on lio's shoulder casually and says,

"where should we start?"

he feels lio inhale; exhale; inhale; and exhale. 

when lio opens his eyes again, they're calmer. 

"don't know," he admits, sounding sheepish. gueira finds himself thinking 'cute'. "guess we can ask galo." pause. "or aina." 

they ask aina and get to work.

  
  


*

  
  


as someone who also accidentally fell into a pedestal's role, lio has some experience in being held to expectations -- grandiose ones, and more ordinary ones too. 

he can't begin to fathom kray's line of thought, can't understand the concept of essentially spitting in the face of a person who adored him enough to save him even though if it had been left to lio it would not have ended that way.

then again, it's a little shameful. or a lot. how lio even now, when it's all 'over', still can't imagine letting him go like he has even at the price of winning. 

he tries to even facetiously conceive of viewing his burnish -- ex burnish -- as regrets or obstacles to be gotten rid of and --

  
  


\--- he can't. he just can't.

he thinks of mornings at 4AM sitting between meis and gueira -- over yonder presently trying on burning rescue jackets ten times too massive for them -- when they first met and expectations were low at best and tenuous more often; then there were mornings after they'd been together for a while. 

now they will also have mornings.

lio imagines a younger galo would have given his eyeteeth to spend mornings with kray the way lio has gotten to spend them with meis and gueira. lio also imagines kray did everything he could to avoid any remotely similar closeness. and he would be furious all over again but this time meis moves to his side and that's it; the reminder is enough; lio breathes.

he breathes and though he does not let go -- not by a longshot -- he does refocus in time to catch galo waving wildly at him in a way that obviously says just one thing:

"over here!"

lio huffs, half smiles and nods. "coming!"

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


"sparklers at new year's," meis admits. both gueira and lio turn to stare. meis ducks his head, his hair falling in its convenient curtain. lio flicks it to the side. 

"and?"

meis shrugs. there are probably other things but there will probably always be other things; so he keeps it simple, and when their first new year on the run together comes around, lio produces scores and scores of sparklers.

they run as if they are free, threading light through the dark. they don't do so for long -- too risky -- but it's nice while it lasts and it gives them the next bit of road they need to run, the next stretch of a wish carved like a single word.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


someday, gueira thinks.

someday, meis thinks.

someday, lio thinks.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


someday, this too will carry no fear.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


though galo offers for lio to move in with him, lio ruffles his hair until it's ridiculously messy and tells him he'll be staying with meis and gueira. 

'for now' isn't said but it's there. 

"oh alright!" galo says and he's so unrepentantly supportive lio can't help but smile wide in return. 

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


on the front table just inside their flat's front door, near where two leather jackets hang more often than not, there is a half-used box of sparklers.

when galo asks what they're for, lio tells him 'new year's', and galo who completely misses the soft expressions of meis and gueira behind his back, beams anyway and says,

"we'll need more than that!"

lio pokes him between the eyes -- gentler than one would expect -- and says, "obviously."

the way they all settle in on the floor around a pizza box still reminds gueira of their running days. their apartment has almost no furniture, so they sit on a motley array of pillows, and there's no tv, and other than the sparklers and jackets it's got no great sense of identity. 

but they're not in a rush.

and maybe that's an identity too.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


after they first met, maybe one of the most unsettling things about being with lio fotia was how easy they _wanted_ it to be -- not that that made it so, but that the desire was there. meis thinks it was around when they did their fourth raid together that he and gueira realized it: the importance of having someone close enough to believe them when they claimed a big word like freedom -- not for himself alone but for all of them.

'we burnish--' lio said from the beginning. 

_ we _ .

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


\--  _ are free. _

\--  _ do not kill. _

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


\--  _ survive.  _

  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


we.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


"morning boss."

"mmpf."

at 10:04am on a tuesday, lio flops over on his share of pillows, revealing the indentations of one of said pillows on his skin. gueira reaches out to thumb the dashed line, amused. lio bats at his hand ineffectually, rolls over again -- more effectual -- and dozes off, again. meis leans on gueira.

"go back to sleep."

and gueira isn't particularly tired. he's almost too happy to be tired. but he's also sun-warm and safe-warm and oh.

a few wordless things.

so he falls back and does as he's told, not because he has to, but because he can.

because they all can.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


it's only once gueira and meis have fully fallen back asleep that lio opens his eyes -- wide awake. only then does he sit carefully up just so he can peer down at both of them, brush meis' hair out of his face and just pet gueira's. only then does he glance from them to the sparklers on the table and murmur old words made new and quiet quiet quiet:

"we did well."

  
  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
  


_ \--but nowhere, it turns out, _

_ is somewhere too: _

_ you, you, _

_ you. _

  
  
  
  
  


-


End file.
